The Legacy Gems
by CondorRadcliff
Summary: Look at the night - millions of stars. Look at the beach - billions of specks. Look at the clouds - trillions of drops. What sets one apart from the many is timing and opportunity. Unnamed Gem X-E0053 finds herself on Earth again, and this time she finds a purpose. (NaNoWriMo 2017 story.)
1. Chapter One - The Gem With No Name

Chapter One

The Gem With No Name

The solitary Gem had no name. She'd never been given one, nor had she asked for one. When someone needed to identify her, they usually called her 'X-E0053' or 'The Rebel'. Then there were those who felt particular animosity towards her, and they called her 'The Mistake'. She didn't answer to them. Instead, she fought alone, against an unsurpassable foe - the Diamond Authority.

She fought the hierarchy, wherever and whenever she found it.

This time, though, City 7-3 had been ready for her.

Gems didn't breathe air, but stopped to catch their breath when tired. It didn't make sense for their physical hard light forms to need to breathe deeply; that was only an artificial means of regulating their form's energy requirements. It cost little energy to stand still, essentially doing nothing more than projecting their form. From there, it drained a Gem of some energy to move and work, more than that to fight, and considerably more to win. Some Gems naturally produced enough energy to sustain a strengthful form capable of extended combat; others only produced enough to sustain a thin but still deceptively lithe form capable of that same extended combat; some simply weren't capable of strength or combat.

Homeworld Security therefore found X-E0053 _extremely_ frustrating, because she _shouldn't_ have been capable of combat _at all_ , given her energy output. And yet they knew her by name, and had to set City-scale traps for her.

X-E0053 herself knew this. The crystalline Cities of Homeworld were never as impermeable as they seemed. There was always a way to sneak in, a guard or two to extinguish, a power source to stampede. There would be an explosion, and the City would consequently either lose power or be forced to drain more from surrounding areas. Eventually, X-E0053 knew, the Diamond Authority would be called into question. Disarray enough power networks, and even the most zealously loyal Gem would ask, "how much power do they _really_ have, if they can't keep the lights on?"

But after 4000 years, even that method was getting difficult. In the past, stampeding one Generator Quartz would be enough to completely destabilize a City. Now, increased efficiencies meant that three City-size areas could be run just as effectively off of one Generator Quartz, and the other two were just being kept for redundancy.

Her latest target, City 7-3, was the third of a tri-City array. The third of three was always hardest, since Security would be tripled and waiting for something to happen. One strategy that had worked in the past was to simply move on to a different array, then hop between them and force a division of force. That had worked only as long as Homeworld Administration or Management didn't think something suspicious was up - which was to say, it worked well. But then there was the need to plan the logistics of transport and the need to establish different identities. Really, it was easier to get past Security at triple-alert.

City 7-3 was like most Cities, in that it was densely packed and designed for Labor Department Gems to have a place to rest and relax as much as Administrative Department Gems. Homeworld Gems had access to the conveniences and culture of Gemkind, moreso than offworld or frontier personnel; even the lowest-ranked Labor-class Gem had a place to socialize with friends on Homeworld, when a Gem of any class would be lucky to _rest_ occasionally in the frontier. So, in general, a City like 7-3 would have a bunch of bulky Gems milling about, even when Security was trying to find a _single_ Gem among them. The logistics of performing a search _without_ simply extinguishing the population of a City and risking scheduling delays, meant that it was easier for X-E0053 to lose Security in one that out of one.

And it was a good time to do so.

X-E0053 was exiting the 7-3 Power Generation Plant the way she'd come in, leaving piles of extinguished Logistics Department Gems behind her. They would recover eventually, just not soon enough to stop her, and she'd made sure they wouldn't be caught in any explosions the stampeding Generator Quartz might cause.

The halls of a Power Generation Plant were narrow by City standards, and she was leaving through side-panels and access tunnels. It required her to crawl, a fairly easy thing for a Gem of her lithe build to do, and not get any of her short blue hair caught on power sub-lines that might be jutting out at a sharp angle. She'd arranged things so that it was all she needed to consider.

Her appearance modifiers - well, she couldn't recall what she'd originally been assigned, it had been so many busy eons ago, but now she used an orange worksuit with bare upper arms and elbow-length fingerless gloves. (The idea was, it left the part of her arms that she would flex open, and that would make it clear she was flexing on her own behalf when she flexed for strength. She'd completely forgotten about this reasoning in the present day, and would have thought it was silly anyway.) Over this, she'd layered on some thicker brown protective gear: boots, knee and elbow pads, forearm bracers, and a corslet. The corslet didn't cover her chest-position gem - stopped right under it, in fact - and lacked shoulder straps while also stopping at her waist but continuing just under it. This formation gave her some armor where she needed it without restricting her movement, yet could be covered or changed with relative ease compared to Security Department's standard gear, even fitting _under_ it when she needed to make an escape.

It had never made much sense to her that, under the modifiers, her actual appearance was a pale meeting of red, green, and blue - but with a fraction less blue than red or green. When compared to her light blue gem, in her rare moments of curious vanity or loneliness, it seemed unusual if not outright strange. There were times when she wished there was another like her, and occasionally she felt a sense of envy on seeing sametype Gems fraternizing.

Moments like these were why she tried to keep busy. She could only push other Gems away when she stopped, so she had to keep moving.

And move she did! The last access tube came to an end, and beyond it was the rest of City 7-3 - now in nighttime, and quite dark on the unlit access roads. Beyond that was more to do, and beyond that, the end of the Diamond Authority, to be followed by the beginning of Societal Autonomous Self-Rule for Gems. The end of castes. The end of tyranny. The end of Era Two; the start of Era Three.

So thinking, she kept on going, carefully replacing the access grate she removed earlier to hide her tracks.

The general darkness of the access road suddenly burned away as spotlight generators snapped on. She couldn't see the footsteps she heard, belonging to at least a couple of companies of Security personnel by the sound of it, but it was clear that they had surrounded her. The spotlights focused onto her, two on ground-based vehicles and two more on the rooftops of nearby buildings. Three or four voices shouted out orders, repeating "Mark target and hold!" mostly.

After a moment, the sounds of Security forming ranks stopped. The spotlights dimmed, likely just to show her what she was up against. Somewhere in front of her, a voice projector crackled to life.

"Unclassified Gem X-E-zero-zero-five-three! You are surrounded on all sides by Security Department personnel. Disarm and prepare for secured transport, or we will attack. I repeat - you are surrounded by two hundred Security Department personnel. You have no chance of a successful escape. Disarm and prepare for secured transport."

That was an Agate of some type, going by her voice. Not good, X-E0053 thought. Security was now deploying mid-level managers into the field against her, and giving them command of a battalion. Still stretched thin, but a sign that they were taking her seriously.

Worse was the makeup of that battalion. They had stun rifles but… the front line consisted of Rubies. That still made sense, but behind them were Peridots and Rutiles, nervous looking ones at that. There was even a Pearl in there, struggling to hold her rifle up.

So, that Manager Agate had gotten wind of an intruder presence, and pulled together what forces she could at short notice. Probably called Logistics and Transportation staff up and handed out rifles. The Rubies were a minority in this 'battalion', and looked new. Someone like herself, already used to Topazes and Fusions, could probably cut her way through them, even taking their firepower into account. But in the confusion, the non-combatants would probably hit some on their own side. If their lack of training was found to be at fault in any after-action report, Security would probably mandate training for any Gem with an even remote possibility of seeing battle - and that would make her job harder.

No, she couldn't fight them. She sighed, raised her hands, and took a step forward.

"Dr- Drop your weapons, X-E-zero-zero-five-three! This is your last warning!" the Agate commanded. The rifles already nervous-looking 'battalion' were pointing began to shake a little. They'd heard stories about this Gem, and were starting to remember them. So it came as a surprise to everyone to see X-E0053 stumble, and then fall onto her face.

That was the distraction she needed, and as a bonus it took eyes off of her gem. She fell onto her right arm, her left arm outstretched. As she fell, she summoned half of her personal weapon onto her right arm - the Grappler Bracer - and fired its wired grappling hook. It latched into a wall somewhere off to her left, and before she'd even hit the ground the bracer was winding the wire, dragging her off to the side of the assembly and out of the spotlights.

Some Rubies, probably old Era 1 soldiers, realized what was happening and began firing while she was still just barely in the spotlight. By the time the rest of the battalion realized what had happened, they could only fire at where she'd been in the spotlight, at where the afterimage burned into their eyes told them she was.

While flying over the access road at speed, X-E0053 activated the other half of her weapon, forming the Grasper Bracer over her left arm. It had a couple of uses, but the obvious one was that it was functionally a large, rounded claw with variable adhesive control. For now, she was more interested in one of the other uses; locking it into position, she timed firing it at a wall parallel to her current trajectory, and…

 _SNAP_ \- she was bounding off down another access alley, perpendicular to her previous trajectory, as she dissipated the grappling hook into its component light and energy. End result: she was now tumbling to a stop around a corner from that battalion of Security Department personnel. In the space of time it took for the managing Agate to realize what had happened and start giving out new orders, X-E0053 was completely out of sight.

...but still within a searchable distance. Security knew she was there now, even if they'd lost the element of surprise. That information would get disseminated throughout the Department (probably with some face-saving edits from the Agate) and they might learn from the experience, to build a better trap for next time. If the problem with assigning Administrators to a field mission like that was their lack of experience in conducting Security actions, the benefit was that there had been an uncomfortable amount of _highly observant analysts_ who were witnesses to what she'd just done. And Administrators talked to each other - if there was any Department that would try to actually learn from their mistakes, instead of repeat the same thing over and over with an expectation of different results, it was Administration.

X-E0053's job had just gotten a whole lot more difficult in the future. Probably.

She did the one thing that made sense at the moment, as soon as she'd gotten her footing back: she ran.

The Bracer Combo, as she'd come to call it, was good for exploration, sudden escape, and sometimes battle; it was not all that great at stealthy _abscondment_ , in the same way that Topazes were not great at hiding themselves behind Rubies. An unusual Gem swinging through access arterials, crawling up building walls, and spinning nets to trip up pursuers attracted _attention_ in a City - and not the kind that outweighed the usual self-evident reward of 'action'.

But a running Gem? Even an unusual one just looked like she was in a hurry to be somewhere, nothing more. Especially if she was wearing a Laborer uniform like the one X-E0053 had just equipped over her own.

So all was well for her, for the time being. She'd completed her mission and evaded her pursuers. And, as a bonus, she got confirmation of her success when, peering out from a quiet nook near the edge of the City, there was a quiet _bang_ from the Power Generation Plant she'd come from. The Generator Quartz stampeder she'd set up had gone off, and the City began losing power.

Lights died off first, in the buildings she could see. That was an easy enough problem for Gems to circumvent. But the loss of power would affect other things: transportation and logistics networks, Administrative central computation cores, Managerial command relays, Security systems… The City was, in the time it took to verbally list off what it now had to do without, now in the dark. The Diamond Authority had been powerless to prevent it, and the authority they derived from their power would be questioned.

Worse: it was clearly the work of a single Gem that was of a type of so little importance as to be unnamed. That inconvenient fact wouldn't make it into the official reports, and it didn't have to. A battalion of Security personnel had just seen it happen with their own eyes. Doubt had been created.

She didn't know how long it would take to 'win'. But each event brought her a step closer.

So thinking, she got up to leave her little nook, to leave City 7-3 under cover of blackout - and heard something crackle behind her.

She whipped around, Bracer Combo equipped, in a battle stance.

There was a small, pink crystalline communication device there, and a small hole in the wall that its little legs had carried it through. "X-E-zero-zero-five-three! How are you?" a disguised voice chirped through it.

It had found her, and so it needed to be shatte-

"-wait! Wait wait wait wait! If I wanted to rat you out, I wouldn't bother talking to you, and I _certainly_ wouldn't use the 'quiet' setting," the voice said quickly. "But, you know, I don't _have_ to."

There was probably more harm in ignoring whoever was at the other end, than in hearing it out. "...What do you want?" X-E0053 asked, tersely.

" _In_ -formation," the voice purred.

"Why?"

"Can't tell you. Not yet anyway."

"Then you won't get it."

"That's too bad! Because the volume setting on this communicator goes up to 'klaxon'..."

"Fine."

"Oh, is _that_ all? No questions?"

The voice's playful manner was grating, but it hadn't done something irreversible. For the moment, anyway. "Who are you?"

"Call me the Manager. _Your_ Manager."

"Who do you work for?"

"Can't tell you that _either_. But for now, we'll call you the Agent. _Our_ Agent."

" 'Our' agent?"

"Mmm-hmmm. You work for a _group_ now."

"Why ' _the_ agent'?"

"Protocol. Decorum. _E-ti-quette_."

"What's the difference?"

"Well, a Manager can produ-" The voice cut off, but resumed after a moment. "Sorry. Running on borrowed time here. But you see, I can produce _results_ here on Homeworld, whereas an Agent, _you_ …"

"...You want me to operate on another planet."

"Yup! Kind of an ask, but I'm pulling all the strings here."

"My existence is my own. And I will not make deals with you, ' _Manager_ '."

"And you don't need to, _A-gent_. I can tell you that we're offering you a chance to do something _bigger_ than just sa-bo-tage."

"Such as?"

"You've been working to subvert those above us, right? You don't spread terror so much as ...doubt. That makes you unusual. Singular. Peculiar."

"What do you know?"

"Just that you overload City power generators, without shattering any Gems. But that only goes so far. You know that, right?"

"Then what do you suggest?"

"You'll be our Agent on another planet, that's all. Granted, it's a gambit with a bandit, causing panic and a racket from some hamlet planet! Be a magnet for panic, a manic mallet as is your habit, and use your talent the way we've planned it. And we've even secured your transit," the voice said freely.

"Oh?"

"There are five Red Eye probes preparing to leave soon. Old models, Era 1. Big enough for a Gem to hide in. Here are their schedules; mem-orize them." The communication device projected locations and launch times onto the wall. Aside from being older models, there wasn't anything odd about them.

"And all you want me to do is get into one of these?"

"Of course! Just one will do."

"This is highly suspicious." It was interesting too, she had to admit. Worth checking out, at least.

"Oh _yes_ , it could be a trap. Feel free to check the flight plan once you're inside, cover your tracks as necessary on your way there, don't tell anyone what's going to happen - if you feel like it."

"You could easily shatter me. Send me somewhere I couldn't come back from."

" _Agent_ , perish the thought. We already know who you are and what you can do, so we know _that_ wouldn't matter. We could throw you into a sta-r and you'd just come back _mad_."

"Know that I would."

"And? What is your answer?"

There was some time before the first Red Eye probe was set to leave. She could skip the first three and, due to how far apart they were from each other, have to decide between the fourth and fifth. Time enough, either way, to fully investigate them. And possibly figure out whether Manager could be trusted. "My own," she replied.

"Ha! Well, we'll be in touch. Good to finally talk to you! Now stand back, sparklie." And with that, the communication device's little legs folded up, pressing into its crystalline form until it shattered ( _kschh!_ ).

The self-shattering communicator was new. X-E0053 occasionally 'visited' Science Department to keep ahead of the latest technology, and this was the first she'd seen anything like it. Which meant it was extremely new or top secret, and _that_ meant Manager was highly placed. A Zircon, perhaps? That would explain the oddly pompous, deferential speech. But even a top Administrator like a Zircon would have trouble acquiring something like that on her own. There was probably some truth to her being part of a group of some sort.

The communicator, then, was identifying, but not so much that the group - 'The Conspiracy', she decided to call it - couldn't afford to leave shards of it lying around. There were simple ways to disintegrate crystalline material, after all, but they would leave telltale stains or marks. At a closer examination, the shards would probably be identical to some other common material, enough to throw off an investigation. Prototype next-generation technology then.

"Era 3 tech?" she whispered to herself. The coming legacy of the Gem race. It suddenly felt less far off than before. She picked up one of the larger shards. It was worth examining, if she ever got the chance.

Enough time had passed with her in that little nook. It was time to keep moving. She got up and sighed; she was 'The Agent' now. For someone who'd never gotten a name, she was picking up nicknames at a decent pace.

City 7-3 stayed dark. Power would probably be restored at some point in the future, but not soon. Its inhabitants would have to work in the dark for some time to come.


	2. Chapter Two - The Gem Who Came Back

Chapter Two

The Gem Who Came Back From Homeworld

 _Water?_

She could sense it, outside of her gem. Wet, cold, slightly corrosive but nothing so much as to affect her, increasing pressure, a lack of light, colder, heavier, pressing pressing _pressing_...

It had been too long. She'd forgotten how to move in it.

Well, first of all, she needed a physical form to move in it. The explosion had extinguished her. A real blow, that one - she hadn't survived something powerful enough to tear apart a Red Eye probe like that in a _long_ time. One more thing those she opposed could know about her: got her transportation exploded away _around her_ and survived.

She brought her form back. She'd only learned that The Conspiracy wanted her to go to _Earth_ of all places at the very last moment, but its environments were mostly similar enough to Homeworld's that the same form would do. She'd also gotten comfortable with her brown-on-orange appearance modifier, so that came back too.

Now with a functioning set of senses, X-E0053 took note of where she was.

 _Underwater and sinking fast._

Worse, it was hard to move, and she'd formed without any air to provide buoyancy.

Down she sank, arms crossed and a little annoyed.

She thought she heard a sound above her. Metal on metal, and metal cutting through the water. Only the dominant species would know how to work with metal, on Earth at least. A watercraft of some sort.

The chain made a slightly different sound, and all her attention was focused on other things she thought were more important. Later, she'd come to understand - 'recall' would be the more accurate term - that life on Earth required a paradigm shift for a Gem to fully experience.

( _whunk!_ )

For now, the chain smacked into her from behind with forceful serendipity and dragged her along at a rate that would be considered 'slow' in interplanetary terms. Hardened saboteur that she was, it simply wasn't what she thought she could expect on Earth. But, aware that something was dragging her even as she slid down it, she reached back behind her in time for her arms to catch onto a heavy metal… _morning star?_ , she thought. The humans appeared to be dragging some sort of weapon from their watercraft; perhaps they were braver now than when she'd first met them, way back when.

She pulled herself around and held on. It was either that, or be lost in a body of water of indeterminate volume, for an indeterminate amount of time.

* * *

"...and that's why the 'Adults in Flashy Leotards' fansub of the ChewyWrap release of the Beautiful Satan Girlfriend TV anime is better than the ChewyWrap dub of the release of the Beautiful Satan Girlfiend OVA!"

It had been a long, long, _long_ , long, but otherwise peaceful day of this. Seana sighed. "Didn't you call it the OAV earlier?"

"No, no, no. The OAV _started_ the series, remember? It's the Original Animated Video - singular! A direct-to-video movie. And then they made the TV anime, and then they followed that with the Original Video Animation - a series!" Jane chirped.

"Okay, so what's it about?" Seana asked, pulling the lever to release the nets. She'd been fishing with their father Snapper for years now, and had gained the 'Cerise Touch' that he'd made famous on the East Coast. It amounted to a certain intuition for where the fish were, and therefore to what depth to drop the nets or lines to. **Magic** to an outsider, years of practice to Seana and Snapper… and **Magic** to Jane.

"What's what abou- wait, were you not listening _at all_?" Jane, for her part, had inherited the 'Cerise Sea Legs'. Said sea legs were the absolute bare minimum that passed from Cerise parent to Cerise child, and she'd otherwise grown up a landlubber. A landlubber who was far better at the land-based side of Cerise Fishing Company - accounting, sales, negotiating offshore internet, etc. - and a valued member of the company, but a landlubber nonetheless. "I thought you were listening! This whole time!"

"Well, I mean, uh, no, it's just…" Seana stammered.

"Just what?"

"...you know I don't watch anime."

"Anime."

That's what I said. 'anime.' "

"It's pronounced ' _A_ nime'. Ergh, fine. Where'd you stop listening; I'll start over."

"Oh, uh, you don't need to do that. Just tell me. I can watch it for myself. Just tell me if it's good or not."

Jane shrugged. "I have no idea. Never seen it."

Seana turned her head s-l-o-w-l-y towards Jane. "So you know all about it, but you haven't seen it," she asked, in a tone that ended with a judgemental period. _Landlubbers and anime!_ , she thought.

Jane had that odd mix of flighty and apathy that was more suited to a cat than a human. When she was on a roll, especially on her interests, her voice seemed to go up an octave while her mouth produced words like a sawmill made sawdust. But when it was time for the more mundane aspects of life, her voice suddenly started sounding more like her father's - just more bored. "Well duh." Jane hopped off the cabin roof, from where she'd been watching her sister work, and pointed theatrically out towards the open sea. " ' _There is no knowledge which cannot be surmised, and no summation that cannot be known!_ ' " she quoted dramatically.

The nets were at optimum deployment and, following the will of the Cerise Touch, Seana touched the lever, stopping the motor. "And that's from somethin' else?"

"It's from 'Beta Swordbreak'," she said, dragging out the vowels in 'Beta' as she continued to point. "Nobumura added it in when he remade the movie remake into a limited series."

"Which started as a VAO, right?" Seana nodded towards the helm in the hopes that her sister would get the hint. Jane really was a complete greenhorn at mechanical things like pulling levers and pushing buttons. If everything was controlled from a tablet computer, she'd be a whiz at it. But they weren't, and so she wasn't.

"No, no no," Jane said, walking over to the helm. "He made the original 'Swordbreak' TV series, and that got too popular so he got shoehorned into making the sequel TV series, but the fans weren't satisfied so he had to make a movie series, and _then_ he made the _OVA_ to his liking... " She stared at the complicated series of levers and handles and lights and dials and tried to remember which one she needed to do something with. They were labeled, but with years of exposure and her lack of glasses they might as well be watercolor-esque stand-in blurs. "...This one, right?" she asked, pulling a lever.

( _CHUNK!_ )

"No! No it isn't! Don't pull-"

( _chunkchunkchunkchunkchunkchunkchunk…_ )

Seana sighed. "That's the anchor. You just dropped anchor." The Smiling Salmon they were attempting to catch weren't going to conveniently swim right into their nets. The F/V Miz-Rey, the pride of their dad's company, was many things, but it was a trawler. It had to be moving at speed to actually catch fish with the nets they were using, and now that looked unlikely.

The plan had originally been that they could scoop up a few good pounds before that giant red eye thing in the sky did something hazardous and/or night fell. (Their intended catch liked neither violence nor nighttime, being most active at sunset.) Then the eye had exploded, possibly as a result of those purple dots someone on shore kept firing at it, or maybe that streak of light that had cut through the twilight - some of the typical weirdness that clustered around the Beach City Lighthouse. The plan _now_ was to catch a few pounds before the debris scared off or killed off the local sealife.

Well, that _had_ been the plan. Now, apparently, the plan was to raise anchor _and then_ catch a couple of Smiling Salmon stragglers.

"...Sorry Seana," Jane said sheepishly.

For her part, Seana was a large, hardworking outdoorswoman crafted out of a car-sized chunk of marble - built the hard way out of grueling ocean work, moisturizer, and a diet of seafood. The job suited her in ways it couldn't work for Jane, and they were fine with that. She liked fresh air and natural light more than drywall and window blinds anyway. Between the sisters and their dad's careful guidance, the company was doing pretty okay. One missed catch wouldn't break them, especially in light of a weird eye thing exploding at the worst time. What they'd caught earlier would probably satisfy their customers. "...It's fine, it's fine," she said. "Just don't do it again. Now reduce speed and raise anchor."

"Aye aye, Cap'n." Jane saluted and worked out which one was the throttle and which ones weren't, squinting at the labels and indicators. "Hey, how come in that order?"

"Speed, then anchor?"

"Yeah." She found the throttle and pulled it down to nothing.

"Because the anchor slows us down, and the engines hafta work harder to push us. That burns the engines out."

"Ooooh."

Seana looked out over the side and saw that the Miz-Rey wasn't cutting through the water anymore. The other option was to put it in reverse, and that might have worked if anyone other than Jane was at the helm. Slowly, gently, gracefully, she came to a slow, floating rest in the sea - as much as a ship could. "Okay, close enough. Pull the anchor."

"Aye aye, Cap'n." Jane pulled the lever for the anchor the other way, hoping it really was as intuitive as that.

( _KNUHC! knuhcknuhcknuhcknuhcknuhcknuhc…_ )

"Fffr? Fff'r ffffrrr frr?" an older, amused voice asked from inside the cabin. "Ffrfr? Ffr ffr ffrrrr?" Snapper emerged in his blue rain gear, which he seemed to wear every day regardless of the actual weather. He was a mystery of a human being to outsiders, with a bushy beard that aged him past what the rest of his jolly, elfin countenance would indicate. In no way did he look like Seana and Jane's biological father, but medical science and grainy photographic evidence had proved time and time again that he was.

"Mutiny? No, Pop, no!" Seana laughed. "Jane dropped anchor by mistake - _she's_ the mutinous dog, she is," she added in her best _ye olde pirate_ voice.

"Hey!" Jane exclaimed.

"Ffrr'r frrr, frffrfr fr ffr'r frr ffr fffrrr!" Snapper chuckled at his own joke. That the humor flew over his daughter's heads didn't bother him much.

"Ah ha ha ha ha," Jane said, forcing some mirth out like it was the last bit of toothpaste in the tube. But it was true; she had dropped anchor and doomed them all to a lonely existence on the high seas, forever trapped and alone. It was an error that could _NEVER_ be undone!

She laughed for real at her dramatic reimagining of events. Of course, with a bit of hindsight, the mechanics of the anchor's drag on the motors made sense. But surely those motors had been designed with some degree of tolerance? She'd seen experiments that showed how they weren't the most efficient way to push a watercraft through water… And if her phone worked so far out and away from the nearest cell tower, she would be able to look it up - not just a video on how it worked, but the ship operation manuals she had backed up to a ghost drive.

 _Oh well_ , she thought, and glanced over at the winding chain. The anchor, at least, would automatically slow and then stop as it got closer to being fully out or pulled in. That much she remembered. Watching it come in should have been boring, and it was to most people, but she found it fascinating for some reason. Peaceful, even.

The chain was wet and slick, but that didn't matter to the good ship Miz-Rey. What did matter, though, was the human figure that came up with the-"SEANA! DAD! The anchor!"

"Frrr-"

"There's someone on it!"

A pair of large, sea-worn hands were reaching over the edge in a flash. "Towels! Towels!" Seana barked at Jane, pointing at the cabin with her free hand.

* * *

It was a blur to her. One moment she was underwater and holding onto a slippery metal hook, then suddenly the pressure and darkness began to abate. The faraway hum of the watercraft cut into the quiet of the deep, which gave way to the bustle of air and light. As her eyes adjusted to the lack of Halite-contaminated water she heard yelling, and then hands reaching down towards her.

She took hold of one - practically the size of her head - and found herself on the deck of a watercraft. Gradually, as her eyesight returned, she saw three faces peering down at her, worried and tense. "Are you okay?" the largest and tallest one asked.

"I'm fine," she answered. She looked around. It was a small craft by Gem standards, but clearly more rugged than herself in its environment.

The three, seeing that she was probably fine in addition to answering that way, deflated a little with relief. "OhImsoglad!" the medium-height one exclaimed. "I thought you might be dead!"

"Dead?" It occurred to X-E0053 that she was speaking to Humans now, the dominant bipedal/bibrachial species on Earth. Organic life, fleshy and fragile, yet clearly still surviving. Strange creatures who framed their thought in terms of organic existence and cessation - 'life' and 'death' they called it, the rigid duality that governed their short time as sentient beings. She herself was probably not 'alive', and yet here was the medium-height one denying that she was 'dead'. The distinction was probably important to them, for philosophical reasons if not practical ones, but for now: not worth the possible confusion. "I'm alive," she replied.

The smallest one with facial hair wrapped her in a covering of some sort - "Frrr, ffr frr frfrrr ffr ffrrr f frrr," it said, rubbing it over her form.

"We need to get her inside," the tall one said. And before she could really think about it, the humans had carried her into the watercraft's main cabin. The air inside was warmer than out, the difference in temperature catching her at the entrance. They were a species of endotherms, she remembered, and so needed to calibrate their environment to an appropriate temperature range. Their lives were short and inefficient, compared to Gems. "On the table!" the tall one added, brushing items off of a platform before laying her on it.

"Excuse me." she asked. "You are Humans, correct?"

"Well yeah," the tall one replied, hovering over her while the other two made preparations in the background. "Aren't you?"

"No."

"Wait, really?" The tall human looked confused for a moment, then seemed to remember something and became excited. "Hey, that mean you're one of those, uh, 'Magic Ladies' from Beach City?"

None of that made sense to her. The tall human appeared to be confusing her with someone, including her in a group that she didn't belong to. "No. I am a Gem from Homeworld."

"What?"

"I am…" She searched for an explanation that might make sense to a Human. "...of a species that is neither biological life nor native to this planet."

This seemed to confuse the tall human further. "So you're a robot from outer space?"

"What is a 'robot'?"

"Uhhh… Jane!"

The medium human had found what she was looking for. She brought over an armful of brightly colored objects, one of which was a tubular solid object that was then shoved into her mouth. "Sorry," the medium human apologized. "Don't talk for a minute; we need to get your temperature."

* * *

Their guest was an odd one, Jane decided. She - it? - sounded like she was from outside of Earth somewhere, in addition to what she'd actually said. Not a robot, like Seana was thinking, but not alive in a biological sense. And as proof of that: the oral thermometer. It put their guest at a worrying 70 degrees, which was alarming at first and definite proof of an alien's alienness. A normal human would be either dead or hopelessly unconscious from hypothermia at that temperature, but their guest was alert and talking as though nothing was out of the ordinary. And even _that_ was incredibly weird, because the water they'd pulled her out of was in the low 50's at best. So she was regulating her body temperature somehow, in spite of apparently being inorganic.

And Seana had mentioned the Magic Ladies from Beach City. Seana mostly likely had heard of them in passing. Jane, on the other hand, followed a blog devoted to the general strangeness of Beach City, 'Keep Beach City Weird', which in hindsight made it sound more like an anarchist screed than a straightforward attempt at citizen reporting. The Beach City Magic Ladies were a local enigma, apparently predating the region, but more of a local curiosity than alien invaders. (There was a single blurry 8 mm film-to-cellphone-to-digital video of them recently posted on Keep Beach City Weird, and they really didn't seem particularly magical nor non-human. They seemed to be purchasing or stealing ice cream from a supermarket in the video, which begged the question of _why_ an alien or magic user need to purchase ice cream anyway.)

But this one, their guest…

She was roughly Jane's height, with a light complexion that could pass for some kind of human skin in the right light and a little distance. She'd have to pass off her apparently natural light-blue hair as a dye job, and change into something other than that worryingly beat-up orange-and-brown jumpsuit - it looked like it was intended for combat rather than survival. In fact, she was one red shoulder pad away from looking like a soldier of some kind.

In all honesty, their guest looked like someone with the same sort of pragmatic 'this was in my closet and it's laundry day' attitude towards clothes as Seana and her dad. She also didn't carry herself like a soldier, seemingly relaxing a bit in what had to be an unusual situation, and was clearly curious about her surroundings rather than suspicious.

But she was not at peace, adjusting herself so at least one foot and one hand was in contact with the table at all times, and with an analytical expression. If things went south, she was ready to escape, or fight back.

So, in all of this, it was strange that the pale blue gem at her chest looked so comforting. It was in an elongated four sided cut, that Jane thought was called a step-cut. It was bigger than any she'd seen in that color before, roughly the length of a soda can, and too big to wear as a necklace or pendant. No surprise then that, on slightly closer inspection, it appeared to be embedded in her, in the upper half of where her sternum would be. The jumpsuit also seemed to be a part of her, conforming to her form in ways clothing wouldn't without some costuming work done to it - and formed around that gem rather than being what held it.

Keep Beach City Weird had warned about Rock People before, often in passing and most recently with a promise that a better description would be forthcoming. If that was what their guest was, they would have to tread lightly.

Certainly more lightly than Seana, who was trying to offer her a heated alcoholic beverage of some kind to warm her up. Drunkenness might loosen tongues on Earth… or it could start an interstellar war. Jane mentally put on her Earth's Finest Diplomat! (copyright pending) hat.

"So, uh, ma'am?" Jane asked, shooing Seana off to the side.

"Are you speaking to me?" their guest replied. She turned on the table, still keeping herself in an advantageous position. (And as she moved, Jane could see that her short hair didn't quite move like it ought to have, but more like it had been gelled into place - this despite her having just come out of the sea.)

"Yeah? Well here, what should we call you?"

"X-E-zero-zero-five-three."

Jane and Seana looked at each other, briefly. "That's your name?" Jane asked.

"I was never given a name," X-E0053 replied.

"Rea- why not?" Seana asked.

"I was created as a one-off experiment. There was no need to name my class." It was a tragic thing to contemplate, and yet X-E0053 was able to say it with no change in expression.

"Well we can't have you on board without a name," Jane said, bluffing her way from word to word. "You'll have to give us a name or, uh, we'll have to throw you overboard."

"Then you will need to give me one," X-E0053 said, again with no change in expression. For someone who had just come out of the water clinging to an anchor chain, she was unperturbed by the threat. She tapped the gem in her chest. "We are named for the gems that comprise us," she added, helpful in diction if not spoken tone.

"Oo-kay, how about… Sapphire?" Seana said. "Sapphire. That's a cute name, right?"

X-E0053 looked at Seana for a moment, trying to understand where the confusion came from. "I am not a Sapphire."

 _Then I guess 'Steel' is probably out of the question too,_ Jane thought. She fished out the satellite signal dock for her phone, and after a moment to connect, opened up the Trillion App. Search term: 'Pale Blue Gem'.

Seana proceeded to try and name her Lapis Lazuli, Diamond, Emerald, Aquamarine, Zircon, and her own favorite Topaz before giving up, her ideas all shot down in polite monotone. "Aww, this is too hard. Jane, how 'bout you? Got anything?"

The gemstones that had come up were either not appropriately blue, or had names that were too hard to pronounce. But one of the suggested searches was 'Pale Blue _Mineral_ ', which she followed. "...Celestite?" she said, reading the first answer.

"Never heard of it," Seana said, taking the phone as Jane offered it. "Hey, yeah, this fits. You might just be a celestite, Celestite."

"Celestite," X-E0053 said, savoring the vowels. "That is acceptable."

"Really? You sure?" Seana asked.

"Just like that? You want us to call you Celestite because that's what your gem looks like?" Jane said.

"Yeah, I mean, isn't that a little…"

"Thank you. I didn't have a name. Now I do," Celestite said. She smiled a little.

* * *

Somewhere in the ocean, a mind awoke. It shimmered in the darkness, projecting a pale, clear light through the depths, knowing without thinking, thinking without thought. It had existed before, it knew, inside a safe, quiet, small place. That place no longer existed, it knew. It was in an environment of some sort, and only knew that it was alien.

 _It wanted to go back to its place!_

The pale, clear light grew in intensity and size and shape, casting light where none had ever been, creating shadows where there had once only been darkness for millennia.

The ocean pulsed in response, reacting to an aberration. Instinct without a brain, reaction without action - if it could know anything, it would recognize the sensation again, of light piercing where the only rule was mass. Mass and volume of unforgiving apathy and crushing emptiness. Anhedonia incarnate, the void of delirium, an endless rejection of Kenosis and Sunyata.

But without thought, the mind, the pale, clear light understood none of this. It felt nothing but a single desire:

 _It wanted to go back to its place!_

With only a primal heartbeat of longing to go from, the pale, clear light began to take form.

It emerged.


	3. Chapter Three - From Here To Beach City

Chapter Three

From Here to Beach City

Celestite, as she was now named, felt a little out of place among the humans. It was becoming clear that they had a different naming format compared to Gems, one that did not incorporate the ever-complicated system facets or cuts. Names, instead, were understood by Humans to be a personal identifier and a familial one, denoting lineage with no thought to birthplace or authority. The easiest way to understand Humans, she'd heard once, was to assume there was a silent "Facet-Zero, Cut-Zero" following their personal name. It was an easy thing to adjust to for her, given her own 'X-E' background, but until just now she hadn't fully believed it.

The larger human, the one with the pink hair, was 'See-na (Facet-Zero, Cut-Zero) Ce-REEss'; the medium one with brown hair was 'Jay-nn (Facet-Zero, Cut-Zero) Ce-REEss'. The 'Ce-REEss'' indicated that they were of the same family, though that left her wondering why there weren't more physical similarities between them.

So she asked.

"Oh, that? That's just 'cause we have different moms. Pop's still our dad though, and we have the DNA tests to prove it."

"Seana," Jane said, a little disapprovingly.

"What?" Seana replied.

"Well, when you say you have DNA proof like that, to someone we've just met, it sounds like there was a legal reason we needed to find out."

"There _was_ , though." Seana shrugged.

"Not the point!"

"It's not like it's dirty laundry or anything."

"It… ugh!" Jane threw her hands up in frustration. "Fine. Tell her then."

"Okay, so, what Jane doesn't want you to know is, we're half-sisters. Same dad, different moms. Mine's dead, rest her soul, and Jane-Momma is still kickin'."

"I didn't mean say it like _that_!"

"Fine. _She runs a bicycle shop_ ," Seana intoned with careful respect. The clear impression was that 'care' and 'respect' were not normal to her speaking style.

"That's better."

"Sure, whatever ya say. But because we both take after our moms instead of Pop no one believes us when we say we're sisters. That was a problem at the hospital once, so we got the test done to make sure." Seana shrugged. "And now no one can tell us otherwise!" she added confidently.

"Indeed." Celestite appreciated the situation they were in, where they had to prove who they were. Earth was clearly a peaceful planet if that was all they had to go through, and that was something special - but also so unique that they were taking it for granted.

"Listen, Celes-tite, we need to discuss something if you're okay now. Wait here for a few minutes." Seana nodded towards the cabin door, and followed Jane out.

She was alone again. It wasn't the quiet solitude of the depths, but the lonely aloneness of friends leaving her in a room. Both of those were new to her, and strange therefore. She gave the humans their privacy and turned around, looking out the window to the dark water outside, still and violent at once in that Earthlike way. The moon hung low over the horizon, aloof and quiet, watching over all.

Her position, reflexively ready to spring into defensive and/or evasive action, relaxed a bit. It took a moment before she noticed this.

* * *

The mind found itself in a quandary. It had a form now. The cold and depth was no longer an issue in the face of its newfound freedom of movement. With the ability to do things came the desire to exercise its liberty. It had been shacked for too long - for its entire existence until then, it felt instinctively.

Now it was time to act.

The mind, now a form, began to do just that. Its desire to _go back to its place!_ slipped away, slowly and unhindered. The absolute freedom ripped through the mind until it was one with its form. There was no longer a mind and a form. That duality was part of the forgotten past, torn away from the infinite now.

Thinking without thought, it wondered what it ought to be now, as it dove higher and higher through the environment.

* * *

"Okay, Celes," Seana said, after a few minutes of discussion outside.

"Celes?" Celestite asked. "Is that a shortening of 'Celestite'?"

"Yeah, that's Jane's idea. I wanna call you 'Celes' - that okay?"

"That is fine."

The alien was a little uncomfortable to look at. She was in the form of a pretty human, college-age and feminine, but there was something that was just _too_ perfect about her. Jane thought it was the symmetry of her face and form, something a lot of actors and models had; Seana saw someone who was clearly far more durable and stronger than any human could be, holding onto a slippery chain in frigid water the way she did. Even if she meant no harm to anyone on Earth, there was the possibility of an accident…

"Okay, okay. Celes. We talked it over and, uhm, we're going to try to pull up one last catch before heading back to port."

"Catch?" Celestite asked.

"Of fish. You're on the F/V - fishing vessel - 'Miz-Rey. We were gettin' ready to call it a day when that Red Eye-thing blew up and scared all the other fishing crews away. We could stay out longer if we wanted to, but…"

Celestite nodded. She didn't understand what 'fish' was exactly, visibly trying to identify the meaning of the word. (For the time being, she assumed that it was important and necessary to the humans somehow, likely as a part of their livelihood.) "And you are required to turn me into your authorities."

"What? No, no," Seana said. "No, we're not gonna do that. Dunno what the gov'ment would do to you if they thought they could. Beside, I figure even if you started causing trouble, those Magic Ladies from Beach City would stop you - and I gotta talk to you about that too, later. But no, it's 'cause we can't keep fishing with you on board. Our permit won't let us. No passengers or extra crew overnight, and you're at least one of those two."

"I think I understand, Seana."

"Good, that's good." She leaned against the kitchenette sink and casually picked up the crowbar they kept next to the spice rack. "This is, uhm, a tool we use on Earth, to pry apart heavy stuff. Called a crowbar. It's a heavy piece of metal, and depending on how this conversation goes I may have to use it on you."

Celestite was utterly unmoved by the threat, and in fact moved to where she was sitting on the edge of the table, her legs dangling over. "Of course. I am an uninvited guest on Earth. And you have the right to self-defense."

Seana shifted into a slightly different position, ready for a fight if necessary - and sighed. It was a difficult topic to bring up, and she didn't have Jane's interests in Science Fiction to draw from. "...We don't have a reason to trust you yet. We might, later."

"I hope to establish peaceful contact with the inhabitants of this planet. It may not be true of other Gems but I have no desire to harm Humans without good reason."

"You know that's not reassuring, right?"

Celestite shrugged. It was clear she was aping Seana's use of the gesture from before, right down to the position of her fingers.

Seana thought it was a little strange to see herself in someone else. "Okay, well, we need to know why you're here."

"That is a long story. I ...apologize, but I am not at liberty to say. It is peaceful to Humans, is all I can say."

Seana thought _we have time_ , but decided not to say it. "Are you here on some kinda mission?"

"Yes, but I was coerced into it."

"Did it involve that, uhm, Red Eye-thing?"

"I arrived on Earth via Red Eye, yes, but it came here on a pre-planned mission plan and I only snuck aboard. It was destroyed on approach, correct? Anything that can do that will be more than enough to extinguish my form."

"We, uhm, don't know what that beam was. It came from Beach City, so those Magic Ladies were probably involved." It was no way to conduct an interrogation. The best cops never told her anything, not even the time of night, until they thought she'd come clean. Information had to come on a one-way track to be useful… but she wasn't a liar, just tight-lipped all those times.

"And you can trust them?"

Celestite was right, Seana noted to herself. The only thing keeping them behaved, according to Jane, was a lot of groundwork in Beach City - but she got that from that blog she read, not from any official sources, so who knew? "Not really, but they keep to themselves," she finally answered. Trust had to be a two-way street.

"That is no reassurance."

"They are, uhm, following the rules and customs of Earth." _I think_ , she added to herself. "We need to know that you're gonna do the same."

"I will attempt to do so. But I am a stranger to your rules and customs. I will probably require a cultural ...guide to do so. Or an official observer, if you believe it is necessary."

Seana took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Celestite was answering without hesitation, and she had no reason to think she was lying. The body language was probably unreliable, but it checked out. However, rather than tell a lie, she was simply not telling her anything. Of course, it was something she said up-front was off-limits. _Why not see if she'll lie?_ Seana wondered. "...Let's change topics, Celes. How come you ended up on the Miz-Rey's anchor?"

Celestite explained how she'd woken up, heard the 'watercraft' before she saw it, and then got hit from behind by the anchor. "It was coincidence, and may have had more to do with your being in the area at just the right time."

"Celes, you can't really expect me to believe that." Seana motioned at the open sea surrounding the F/V Miz-Rey. "That's like a million to one chance."

"There are only a few other explanations. They start differently, but all end with me attacking you upon being pulled up."

"Yeah, alright." That much rang true to Seana. Celestite certainly hadn't been acting like anything but someone they'd accidentally rescued from the bottom of the ocean. Besides openly agreeing with the reasoning of how she could be taken as a threat, she'd been nothing but cooperative. (And who'd ever heard of a fishing boat accidentally catching up something unintended? Certainly not the daughter of a fisher! An attractive alien was a whole lot better than a _boot_ or something stereotypical like that.) "Think you could get past me?"

"With the advantage of surprise? Definitely. In a straightforward duel? Definitely. If you caught me flat-footed? Definitely." There was every indication that she was considering a few scenarios and giving an honest assessment.

None of that made it any less insulting. "Oh yeah? What makes you think that?"

"I apologize in advance." Celestite reached over and pulled the crowbar out of Seana's hand, then bent it to 90 degrees with little apparent effort.

"Whoa," Seana said after the impact of it registered, and after she'd had a chance to look at her own hands to see that, yes, Celestite had simply taken her weapon out of her hands. "Uhm."

"It is a useful tool, and if I let you connect with it I would be in physical danger." She handed it back to Seana.

"Hrgh," Seana grunted and slowly bent her crowbar back into usefulness over her knee. "It's, uhm, not as easy as it looks," she said, mostly to herself. In fact, she was a little impressed with herself; the last time she'd really done any strength training was back in high school.

"No. That would represent the upper limits of my strength. If you three were of equal strength and attacked me as a group, you could defeat me."

A pretty face and stronger than herself - and with blunt honesty to boot. _Geez, where were you when I needed you Senior year_ , Seana wondered. She sighed. "Okay, yeah, you're probably right." She held up her hands in resignation. "I don't think we can trust you yet, but if you wanted to start trouble you woulda done it by now. Well, works for me! Wanna come out and get acquainted with the Cerise family proper-style?"

"Proper-style?" Celestite asked, confused at a combination of words that seemed made up on the spot.

"Yeah. I think we pulled up a little more Smiling Salmon than we needed." In truth, there was no such thing - good Smiling Salmon was seasonal, ran at the first sign of modern fishing, fought like a fin-and-gill wildcat if it somehow ended up in a net, and was generally agreed to be the tastiest of salmons. To say that it was expensive on top of being rare to come by would be an understatement, and in certain corners of the country it was _the_ delicacy to yearn for. But, there were maybe four fishing companies on the entire Atlantic coast that could catch them at all, of which only Snapper Cerise could do it reliably. And even then, it was more 'miss' than 'hit'.

Seana's sudden excitement was confusing to Celestite. Visibly so, but only to someone who wasn't suddenly excited. "Smiling Salmon? Is that …'fish'?"

"Yeah! Real tasty too. I'll get Pop to cook some up and we'll have dinner. Aw man, wish I could be you right now - first Earth meal and it's Pop's Grilled Smiling Salmon!" Seana said excitedly, ignoring Celestite's ignorance in favor of her own growling stomach. "You're _lucky_ , girl - _lucky_."

* * *

The form found that, once it drove itself high enough, it burst through one environment and into another. This second environment lacked pressure and resistance to movement, but was also harder to maneuver in for the reason that there was nothing to push off of. (Not that it understood this, or much of anything. Instinct only told it how to move, not something as useful as an understanding of Earthly physics.)

It dove back into the first environment and tried to find purpose. Mysteries mortal were far beyond its comprehension, let alone the unlocking of them, as was the everlasting secret of life and death. It knew only what it could perceive with its newfound senses - sight, sound, touch, without knowledge of what they were - and what it knew now was that it could move.

Then it perceived something far-off. It hadn't yet made the connection between sight and sound, and so could not understand how far-off exactly that something was. But it was still more interesting than freedom of movement; it was a goal!

Instinct tried to tell the form that it was Prey. The form ignored its instinct, and began moving towards the something.

It only saw a goal of some sort. And if it could think, reason, benefit from the application of logic and intelligence in any way, it might wonder what it would do when it attained said goal.

* * *

As Seana was excitedly contemplating the possibility of Smiling Salmon for 'dinner' (was that a 'meal', that Humans needed to partake in for sustenance? Celestite wondered), Jane suddenly burst into the cabin. "Seana! Trouble on the sonar!"

In the blink of an eye Seana went from total excitement to businesslike seriousness. Moving faster than Celestite thought possible, the humans ran up to the aft of the watercraft. Not wanting to be left alone again, and feeling that she could contribute to what was clearly an emergency, Celestite followed them out with equal quickness.

"What is it?" Jane was asking Seana worriedly, both of them looking at a circular screen. It appeared to Celestite to be a sound-based echolocation system display - a quaint form of sensor to a Gem who'd lived through Era 1 and Era 2, albeit a rugged one that was extremely simple to operate and maintain. That being the case, the point at the center was the watercraft and the enormous shadow that was showing up from the side of the display was…

"Pop! Monster! Get us out of here! Full speed!" Seana suddenly shouted.

"Frrr ffffr!" Snapper shouted back, and the watercraft suddenly lurched forward.

It suddenly occurred to Celestite that the watercraft was extremely vulnerable. The 'crowbar' from earlier meant nothing to her, and yet the hull appeared to be made of thinner, if layered, material. If that 'monster' was related to Gems somehow…

...The Red Eye.

It was Era 1 tech, and would have been running on a Generator Quartz. A smaller one, to be sure, but more than enough to power a single starship. If the Red Eye's sudden explosive breakup caused the usual safeties to fail to suppress the power surge, or perhaps fail entirely, there was a distinct possibility of an _uncontrolled_ energy stampede reverberating throughout the Generator Quartz _itself_ \- not just the surrounding systems, as they'd been completely destroyed. It was an eventuality she'd gone out of her way to avoid in her activities on Homeworld.

The best case scenario was that the Gem, the Generator Quartz, would simply explode, tearing apart its Power Generation Plant and any surrounding areas, possibly the entire City itself. ...There was nothing actually good about this. All it meant was that she'd committed a mass shattering. Any greater duty or purpose meant nothing in the face of that, let alone fighting for the coming era. And yet it was still the best case scenario.

The _worst_ case scenario was that the Generator Quartz would gain sentience and a physical form. It was a Gemtype _designed_ to produce energy far in excess of even the Diamonds, and even one rated for use as a Red Eye power source would be formidable. But it would also have no sense of self, and certainly no mental development. It couldn't take a standard form, and wouldn't know that it ought to. It would be a monster, in the most tragic sense of the word. On Homeworld, the result would be the same - City destroyed, its inhabitants shattered - but with the addition of it spreading to other Cities.

On Earth? It would rampage about the planet, tearing apart cities and civilization alike. The Magic Ladies would only have a chance at stopping it if it flew towards them, and that would come down to chance. Humans were more fragile than Gems, if she was recalling correctly, and would die more easily. If that monster could move quickly, the catastrophe would be that much greater; if it was slow and land-bound, perhaps the damage could be contained to just one facet of the planet.

The real damage would be from the _fear_ of it. The destruction of _one_ city would force the rest of them to wonder if they would be next. The happiest inhabitants of Earth would be the ones who knew nothing of the end they faced. The intelligent would envy the ignorant; the survivors would envy the gone.

She had _two_ crucial advantages. First, on Homeworld there was no space to safely deal with such a monster without incurring massive collateral damage. On Earth, she was currently floating somewhere over a massive and obvious lack of Human civilization. Earth was a relatively untouched frontier planet, and that would have to be its saving grace.

Second, the Generator Quartz wouldn't stop generating energy just because it gained a physical form, and that energy would be continuously pumped into that physical form. She couldn't predict how it would affect that form - it might gain size, or speed, or mass, or some unspecified special ability. But it meant that now, relatively soon after it had first formed, there would be a chance to stop it while it was still weak.

It would be far stronger than any other foe she'd ever fought, and it would be her foe to fight. Celestite grit her teeth, preparing to step in for the Humans.


	4. Four - Night of the Fluttering Ray

Chapter Four

Night of the Fluttering Ray

The monster had been showing up on the fish finder for a while. Not a _long_ while, but long enough that Jane thought it was a leftover piece of alien spaceship at first, or maybe a whale. And then it had gotten _bigger_. That was the point where she decided they were in Seana-depths, and way out of Jane-depths.

Seana, of course, gave the right call, while she herself froze up. The twin 700-hp Goldbanks engines snarled and roared to life in the quiet night, forcing the F/V Miz-Rey to fight the water as it climbed up to a blistering 18 knots. That wasn't a particularly fast speed on land, but to a trawler it was the equivalent of firing orbital booster rockets, and only to be used if they wanted to be _gone_ in a _hurry_.

Jane knew the specs, could dismantle then reassemble the motors from memory, and could hear them guzzling money down from the fuel tanks. She also knew that the Goldbanks would top out at 22 knots in 'Escape' mode, but that would burn down their operational lifetime to ...however much fuel was left in the tank, really.

None of this was relevant at the moment, not to Jane, not while she was on the boat, not while they were running for their lives. She froze, fear getting the better of her and eating away at what little resolve she knew she had, and she fell to the deck to curl up into a fetal ball. A little voice in her head told her it was still better than actively running away - which in this case would be jumping out of the trawler that was already doing just that, and into the Atlantic - but she didn't find this comforting.

This continued for a few seconds, that felt like minutes in Jane's head, until Seana picked her up with one arm and shoved a life vest onto her. She was shouting something, face contorted in worry - what was it?

"...ne! Jane! JANE!"

"Huh?" Jane replied.

"Snap that on and hold onto somethin'!" Seana shouted. Her easygoing big sister was gone now; in her place stood a fearless pink-haired mountain of a lady who yielded to neither open sea nor raging waves.

As always, Jane struggled to not cower in the face of something Seana could stare down, and it was only with knowledge that her big sister was there that she could function. With shaking fingers, Jane snapped on the life vest; to her side Celestite was doing the same. For someone her size a vest would keep her on the surface of the water no matter what but… given the size of the monster on the fish finder, that might not be a good thing.

A few minutes passed.

The Miz-Rey chugged along briskly. With the monster still out of sight, Jane gradually felt her fears and anxieties step down. According to the fish finder it wasn't gaining on them; they weren't losing it either. With at least an hour to go before they would reach land, let alone a harbor, it wasn't a comforting situation.

Not that it might do them much good to reach land. All they knew now was that the monster could swim. If it turned out that it could _walk_ , they'd have to find a car, or steal a truck, or just flat out run for hours, or, or, or…

She felt Seana's hand on her shoulder, large and reassuring. "Jane, don't worry. We're going to be fine," she said. Her face was still 'Red' Seana's, their name for her stony, 'serious' face - based, again, on a family in-joke rather than any reddening of her face.

'Red' Seana wasn't reassuring, in the same way an activated SWAT team wasn't. Any time Seana felt a need to be serious, after all, was likely to be one where Jane was afraid and trying not to lose her mind. There was no danger to fear when Seana was running things, Jane knew in the back of her logical mind.

And then there was Celestite. Seana was an outlier in that she'd laughed off enough Atlantic storms that very little bothered her anymore, but normal people, people like Jane without special training or experience with hazardous situations, were more likely to panic a little. But Celestite? Maybe it was because she was a gem - whatever that meant - and was used to seeing stuff in space that would make a tactical espionage agent shiver, but she was... calm. Utterly calm. Even _bored_ , like she was watching to see what would happen and was disappointed that nothing was happening.

She was also, despite the Miz-Rey rocking from stern to aft over the sea, standing completely still _without_ holding onto anything, looking like a clueless background extra during a 'camera shake' moment in a sci-fi show. Even Seana and Dad wouldn't dare do anything in such a situation without one hand firmly grasping something solid. Celestite wasn't afraid, she realized, because she had zero reason to be afraid.

She _knew_ something, something that they didn't.

"Celestite!" Jane called out to her.

"Yes?"

"Why aren't you more worried about any of this?"

* * *

The Jane's question was a little odd. More importantly though, she'd done it again; the Humans didn't consider their names to be titles, so it was improper to think of her as 'the' Jane when she was Jane (Facet-Zero, Cut-Zero). But she set that aside for the moment. "I apologize. Would it help if I was more worried?"

"Maybe!" Jane shouted over the breeze and breaking waves. "I don't-"

"JANE!" Seana shouted. "Keep watching the finder!"

"O-Okay!" She struggled to make her way back over to the sensor panel, her footing unsteady from the rocking.

Celestite was a little startled to see this. She'd thought Humans had the ability to affix themselves solidly to surfaces - but no, it had just been that the watercraft had been more steady earlier. This put her at a distinct situational advantage, so...

Jane was clearly surprised when Celestite picked her up by the armpits and strode her over to the sensor panel chair. "Wha- How did-"

"Watch the finder please," Celestite reminded, flitting her eyes and nodding her head down to the panel to drive the point home. At a glance, the panel was a little too wide to accommodate a good table edge or handle to hold onto (it likely wasn't meant to be used during an emergency Return To Base situation, she thought). So, she stood still and gave Jane her arm to hold onto while she sat.

This gave her the opportunity to look over the panel as well. There were a few echolocation sensor displays, the most prominent ones showing vertical, lateral, and longitudinal images. For now, the monster was still only showing up on the vertical display, meaning it was relatively close to the surface and still following the F/V Miz-Rey from behind. Going by the distances marked out on the display, it was still some distance behind; that it hadn't gained on them probably meant that its cruising speed was the same as the watercraft's. _For now_ , she added mentally.

The humans had a sense of pride that didn't automatically encroach into arrogance. They would necessarily _have_ to have that pride, to go out onto such a large plane of water in a vessel with hulls as thin as that 'crow-bar' from earlier. Gems would do only what they thought was possible, and 'fishing' as she'd been seeing it fell within that realm; Humans, meanwhile, apparently didn't consider something that _so obviously_ risked their fragile, short lives to be impossible. Even Jane, largely paralyzed with fear a little earlier, was able to set aside the obvious contradiction under normal circumstances - while Seana and Snapper seemed to _welcome_ it.

So, for all the incredible danger they actually were in, Celestite found it a good opportunity to observe them. Seana had _immediately_ recognized, just by looking at one axis's worth of echolocation, that large danger was approaching. It wasn't a stretch to conclude that these humans, or at least these particular humans aboard this particular watercraft, had made preparations for this sort of eventuality. And besides, they kept a weapon in their recreation area, apparently just in case Seana needed one; it was unlikely that they would go onto the open water without having made the proper preparations to do so.

And if she recalled correctly, the Rebellion on Earth from long ago left a number of Gem-related monsters roaming around. Backed into a corner, they might not need any help in destroying that monster.

That monster was probably still small enough to for her to successfully intervene. It might be small enough that she wouldn't need to.

But this confidence was cut short, when she saw Jane's alarmed expression.

* * *

The form was unsatisfied. It was a feeling it hadn't felt before, and didn't appreciate or like. No matter how hard it pushed itself through the environment, using the environment itself to push off of, it couldn't move fast enough to catch up with that noise-making goal.

Then it had a thought, the first one of its existence: the problem was more due to the environment it was in. There was another environment right above it - could it travel faster that way?

It pushed itself towards that other environment, leaping out into the thinness of resistance.

To its satisfaction, it found that it was faster in the thinner environment. Not _much_ faster, it seemed, but enough to catch its goal.

* * *

 _So far, so good_ , Seana thought. The monster was keeping its distance, Pop was radioing area authorities and/or anyone else dumb enough to not immediately evacuate, Jane had recovered enough to watch the sonar displays, and Celes was not getting in the way. Now, if things would stay quiet for a bit longer…

" _Seana!_ " Jane's slightly panicked voice crackled through the onboard radio. " _Change in s-situation!_ "

"What's wrong?" Seana replied through the same.

" _The monster! It, uhm, disappeared._ "

 _Disappeared…?_ she thought. "You mean it turned around?"

" _I thi-_ " There was a momentary jostling over the radio. " _Seana, the monster is likely in the air. Recommend immediate evasive action,_ " Celestite said calmly, having taken over for some reason.

"...fffFISHsticks!" Seana cursed. "Jane, Celestite; binoculars, watch the sky! Pop; take the helm!" she ordered.

"Fffrr frr ff-"

"Harpoon!" Seana replied. She jumped down from the helm and ran past Jane and Celestite, into the cabin. It was stored somewhere in the cabin, and she threw open cupboards high and low, dug under the sofa cushions, and began pulling open the floor storage panels. "Where is it, where is it, where is it…!"

* * *

Snapper never wanted to put his children into harm's way if he could help it. He'd promised his dearly departed first wife, on her deathbed no less, that it would be Seana's choice to join him on the sea - and only if she was truly ready. And she was, proving herself not only worthy of following him but to also succeed him when the time came. She could handle anything the sea dared throw at her, and he had no doubt that if Poseidon himself came knocking, she'd just challenge him to an arm-wrestling match.

But... Jane was aboard.

He'd made the same promise to Jane-Maria, that Jane could come aboard only by her own choice. She proved to be a far better bookkeeper than fisherwoman - which wasn't a difficult bar for her to step over by any means, it had to be admitted. But she insisted on getting some experience on the ocean. She _insisted_. And he _listened_.

He should've refused, he told himself. He should have listened to that gut feeling, and left Jane on the dock, or headed back at the first sign of that accursed Red Eye, or left the moment they'd pulled up the alien girl.

And the alien girl! Celestite, they called her. She'd survive, but not because of him! His mistakes were going to drag them all down to the bottom of the Atlantic. Company ruined, daughters lost, wife widowed, guest forsaken!

But… Maybe they could fight the monster. Seana had trained with the harpoon cannon. She'd fight to the bitter end, just to cover for his mistakes...

That wouldn't do! Not as a man, not as a fisherman. He couldn't let that happen.

So thinking, he slowly pulled the Eta Capsule from his inner pocket, and looked at it for what might be the last time. It was about the size and length of a fishing pole handle, with a flash unit at the tip, and fit all-too-perfectly in his hand. To use it had been unthinkable in his relatively calm life; he'd been warned, it was for a do-or-die situation. But its time was coming. Too many years had passed, and maybe it wouldn't work. It had to be a last-ditch solution.

But… Seana was allowed - no, _deserved_ \- a chance to fight, and win. It might be his mistakes, but it was her decision to protect them, and he knew she'd want that chance. It wasn't a test, and couldn't be, because she'd already passed every test he'd ever given her.

Snapper replaced the Eta Capsule, and gripped the ship's wheel tightly. For now, his duty as a father was to give her a solid, predictable place to stand. The F/V Miz-Rey continued towards the coastline without the slightest deviation.

* * *

The maximum range of the Miz-Rey's sonar was roughly four kilometers, or a little over two nautical miles, and it was standard to leave the vertical sonar turned that wide after an unusual incident - like with the Red Eye-thing. In daylight, it might be possible to see a monster approach above the water at that distance, with some luck. But it was nighttime, and Jane couldn't forget that she wasn't wearing her glasses as she scanned the water behind them with binoculars.

"There," Celestite said, and gently pushed Jane's field of vision towards a single point behind the Miz-Rey.

And there it was, floating above the sea maybe no higher than a few feet off the surface. "It's… it's a ray," she whispered. "But it's- it has to be _hundreds_ of feet wide. It looks like it should be carrying a rocket into the stratosphere!" She lowered her binoculars, no longer seeing the point of trying to find it.

"A ray? Is that a species native to this planet?" Celestite asked, not taking her eyes off of the monster.

"Yes-"

"- _Interesting_ ," Celestite said quickly, cutting Jane off. "But, we're lucky. It's wide, and probably long, but not very deep." She turned to Jane, looking her in the eyes. "I believe this monster is a Gem Stampede. That makes it my fault, and my responsibility. It likely came to Earth with me. I have no reason to believe I can actually extinguish it, but I will try."

"Uhm, what?"

"While I try to do so, I need you and your family to not attract the Gem Stampede's attention. That way I will be able to fight without distrac-"

"FIRE IN THE HOLE," Seana announced, suddenly appearing back outside with earmuffs and the ship's 50mm harpoon cannon. She had convinced someone, somehow, to modify it for use with a _shoulder mount_ , on the theory that no one else would need to use it anyway. (Unsaid: no one else _could_ use it that way.)

Jane didn't know exactly how or why Celestite recognized that as a warning to hug the deck. All she knew was that one moment she was on the railing, and in the next she'd been pulled down into a prone position, her hands slapped up against her ears.

* * *

 _ **KRACKOOOOM.**_

The weapon Seana had returned with was approximately as long as Jane was tall, and appeared to be designed to propel a large metal harpoon into something soft through a combustive chemical reaction. It was almost certainly meant to be mounted to something like a watercraft's deck, rather than fired from the shoulder, and Celestite briefly wondered what _exactly_ had infuriated the Humans enough to prompt them to invent it.

The harpoon, lacking the capacity for meticulous thought, flew in a careful arc towards the Ray-form Gem Stampede. If it had been an energy-based weapon, a line-of-sight shot might have been possible; instead, the harpoon was clearly so heavy that nothing reasonable could propel it quickly enough to ignore gravity over that range, which necessitated an indirect arc. That the humans would just build weapons to work _around_ gravity rather than negate it was a certain sort of impressive that, Celestite knew, would worry certain Gems on Homeworld…

...And that it could actually score a _hit_ at that range would flat-out _terrify_ them. Celestite had never felt so intimidated or stupefied by a weapon before.

The hit, unfortunately, was out of visible range for a human; Celestite could see that it did. This was why Seana had to ask: "DID IT HIT?"

She got her answer. The Ray-form Gem Stampede _screeched_ in reaction, and picked up speed. "You appear to have enraged the Gem Stampede, Seana," Celestite said calmly.

"I DID THE WHAT TO THE WHAT?" Seana cupped her hand over the hearing protector she'd put on. Evidently she was having some trouble hearing through the hearing protector, and/or had forgotten she still had it on.

"Jane, can you hear me?" Celestite asked.

"Y-yeah?" Jane said.

"Hold onto something, and be ready to abandon ship if I am unsuccessful."

"Ho- Aba- wait- what- wait, how would we know?"

Celestite stood up and brought her arms in front of her gem, and willed the Bracer Combo into existence. "You'll know."

She made sure she was standing clear of Jane and Seana, bent her knees a little, and jumped. As she gained altitude, she thought she heard a small _craak_ behind her, but didn't have time to look back.

Soon, she was high enough in the air that the watercraft was the size of her thumb. She'd jumped higher than she intended - apparently Earth and Homeworld had slightly different gravitational effects - but it was good enough. What she needed was to jump onto the Ray-form Gem Stampede, and she wasn't sure if it was something the Grapnel Bracer could latch on to. Seana clearly had better aim with a harpoon cannon(?) than she did with her own two legs.

The Ray-form Gem Stampede was large, easily the largest gemform she'd ever seen. It was considerably wider than it was long, to the point that it could be described as _just_ a set of wings. And if everything went well, she would have to correct what she'd told Jane.

Viewed from the front, it wasn't clear how it had been flying; from above, it looked like the trailing edges on its wings were ...moving. Not in a wave or in even a set pattern, but seemingly at random. Somehow, it had instinctively created a wide-winged form that took advantage of a gemform's low weight relative to its high tensile strength, to allow it to create adequate thrust by fluttering the equivalent of _flaps_ at the trailing edges of its wings. It was an unusual trick of instinct, or evolution, that couldn't possibly provide thrust in Homeworld's low-pressure atmosphere, or in space.

...The how and why were unimportant, she told herself at about the apogee of her jump. The Ray-form Gem Stampede was big enough that it didn't need to directly attack something, since its size alone would be enough to cause collateral and/or secondary damage.

She looked back at the Miz-Rey, worried. Extinguishing a gemform typically created a pressure wave that emanated outwards, the size of which was dictated by its power at that moment. For a normal-sized gem this would cause little to no collateral damage at all. But this was a _Gem Stampede_ ; it would probably create a pressure wave powerful enough to seriously damage a Homeworld City upon extinguishing. Who knew what kind of damage it could do even out over the water?

She looked over at the shore, now visible from her height. It did not appear to be heavily inhabited, judging by the number of lights. The land would get hit by a powerful gust, and that would be it. _Hopefully_ , she thought.

That left the water. The pressure wave would be far more dangerous to any vessels or watercrafts on the water, particularly the ones closest by.

So, she saw two options: one, leave the Ray-form Gem Stampede alone and try to lead it off to another, safer area or two, extinguish it now before it could get worse. It was an easy choice, and one she felt disgusted at herself for making.

She was falling now, and beginning to pick up speed. The glow of her gem was something she felt like she didn't deserv-

-and just like that, she had an idea.

* * *

"CAN YOU SEE HER, JANE?" Seana asked. She'd put the harpoon cannon down

"No, are you kidding, I can barely- there! There she is!" Jane was hurriedly scanning the sky with her binoculars. They'd lost Celestite in the time it took for the ship to right itself from the force of her jump, but now she was sending a signal.

"WH- THAT BLINKING LIGHT?" She pointed at the sky.

It was not all that surprising, really, that someone with a gem implanted in their body could make it flash on cue. Jane looked a little closer and - in retrospect, possibly the best thing she could have done that day - waved at her. "It's her! She's really high up…"

The blinking stopped. "HEY THE BLINKING STOPPE-"

Jane yanked Seana's earmuffs off without looking away. "Quiet! Quiet. She's making some kind of hand signals."

"WHA- woops. What kind?"

It wasn't much, really. First motion: spreading her fingers out from a fist, twice. Second motion: her arm sweeping from one side to the other, like a wave. Rest beat, then repeat. "...Pop, then a wave?" Jane said to herself.

"Like, a balloon?"

"Yeah, yeah. Something's going to burst… and then… create a…!" She dropped her binoculars - which swung down to her chest thanks to the neck strap - and grasped out for Seana's arm. "The monster, it's going to pop, and it's going to make a wave. A big one."

Seana nodded. For her, some things took some time to fully understand, but when the ocean was concerned she'd get it immediately. "Okay. Uhm, you seal off the cabin, and stay outside when you're done. Quick. I'll tell Pop, and seal the holds."

* * *

It would have been easier to understand if Jane had just made some motion or gesture to show that she understood, but the sisters immediately ran off to do things and ...that would have to be enough.

By slowing her descent to communicate, Celestite was in danger of overshooting the Gem Stampede. So, she took aim and fired the Grappler Bracer's wired grappling hook at it. ('Fired' and 'hook' were probably not the right words. The 'hook' was actually three semi-independent wired square bipyramids, attached to the wire at one end and embedding itself into its target on the other. The faces on the wired end were capable of providing thrust, so it would not easily lose speed or tension over long distances - and, as a bonus, allowed each of the 'hooks' to be aimed at slightly different locations rather than clustering them. This arrangement allowed for a certain amount of creativity in its use, which Science Department apparently never followed up on.)

Within moments, which she'd spent reminiscing about the mechanics behind her weapons, the grappling hook had attached onto the Gem Stampede and the Grappler Bracer was winding the wire, pulling her towards her target. And then, she _slammed_ into it.

It was an unreal sensation, to be walking on another gemform. She could tell herself that it was a transport vessel, or a spacecraft - but it wasn't that solid. No, it gave slightly beneath her own weight. She could feel a maintenance pulse, a minor oscillation in the skin that periodically supplied a gemform with instructions on the form it should take; but scaled up to this size, it felt more like a minor land-tremor.

 _Science Department would want to study this, absolutely,_ she thought.

She'd found another use for the Grappler Bracer, long ago. One of the flaws behind the grappling wire was that it was formed in use, and didn't exist as a physical presence until it was fired at something. This meant that the 'hook' itself was attached directly to the Bracer until use, but also meant that it could be spun while still attached. Long story short, unless and until she fired the grappling hook, the Grappler Bracer was a nigh-indestructible _drill_. "Here goes," she said, starting it up.

She leaned back, then punched the Grappler Bracer into the Gem Stampede. _SCREEEEEECH!_ , the gemform screamed - from where, Celestite couldn't tell - and shook a bit, probably in an instinctive reaction to pain.

Even at full strength and with all her weight behind it, the drill barely pierced the surface. And though she'd said the Gem Stampede's form wasn't all that deep, it was still deeper than she was tall. She wished she'd thought up some other plans beforehand, since just punching it with a drill just was clearly not going to work. For one, it was far too small to go in far enough-

-but the harpoon wasn't.

Celestite looked around. Her eyesight had been enough to see that it had hit the Gem Stampede, but she hadn't paid attention to where exactly…

Not too far from where she'd landed, actually.

* * *

 _PAIN._

Something hurt, suddenly. Somewhere on the form, there was pain. Searing. It didn't know how to process this new sensation. It had come out of nowhere. But it wasn't enough to distract from its goal.

And then, more _PAIN_ preceded by some light tapping and a high-pitched sound. The first one had been sudden and still throbbed, but this one was too sudden, and the form shook in spite of itself.

In a hot flash of another feeling - rage, though it couldn't possibly attach a name to it - it lifted up a little, climbing higher into the environment. Instinct told it to do this, on the theory that whatever was administering _PAIN_ would slip off if it did that.

The form continued towards its goal, a little fast now. It had associated _PAIN_ with the chase, and wanted to get the chase over with quickly.

* * *

With the Ray-form Gem Stampede's increase in angle of climb and velocity, Celestite nearly lost her footing - but slammed down the open Grasper Bracer in time. She'd planned to walk to the harpoon, but now she was forced to hop: releasing the grasper's variable adhesive control at the right moment so she could jump a short distance without falling, then redeploying it on landing.

The harpoon, on close inspection, was solid enough to pierce into the Gem Stampede with no structural damage or warping - and appeared to be two or three hand-widths in. It would have been more than enough to extinguish a normal-sized gemform, and probably two or three Gems standing behind the first one as well, but this was no ordinary gemform.

Celestite set aside the thinking, and - "Hhnn!" - brought her free fist down onto the harpoon end, hoping to drive it in further. She did this again and again, but not only did it not move, the Gem Stampede wasn't reacting to it like hurt.

She looked up. The shore was getting closer, representing less and less distance for the Miz-Rey to escape in. Time was running out and she needed a plan.

"...Well, I've got one," she said under her breath. It was an old maneuver she'd developed for use on the largest gemforms, useful for applying significant force to a small area, but not really rated for something so _large_. It was getting to be time for an all or nothing measure, and the BC-02 maneuver was just that. She had one shot, and it absolutely had to count.

So thinking, she fired the Grappler Bracer into the skin near the harpoon and, concentrating all her energy into her legs, jumped as high as she could. The Grappler Bracer's wire trailed out, being created at a draining rate, until she reached the apogee of her jump.

There, she dissipated the Grasper Bracer from her left forearm and, bringing her knee up to her chest, reformed it onto the side of her right lower leg. Then she pulled the Grappler Bracer's wire taut and, taking a breath, began winding it in at maximum speed. It pulled her in, dragging her, cutting through the night sky like a shooting star towards the Ray-form Gem Stampede's back, until…!

At the last moment, she spun around and slammed into the harpoon with a kick! And at the moment of impact, she fired the Grasper Bracer, adding further kinetic force to the high-speed kick.

Time stood absolutely still for just a moment of doubt.

* * *

The form felt the tapping leave its back. That first point of _PAIN_ was still there, though, burning as before.

Suddenly, more _PAI_ -

* * *

The force of the BC-02 maneuver warped the harpoon at the point of impact - but didn't break it, forcing it through and creating a Seana-sized hole through the Ray-form Gem Stampede's flat body. The harpoon slammed into the water, slicing through it so quickly that it kept a sheen of air around it temporarily, not even slowing down until it was some distance into the deep. Celestite followed it through, her momentum slowed but not stopped by the transference of force.

She hit the water, right leg still extended in a kick, and proceeded to dive down a bit until it slowed her down. The life vest quickly did its job and pulled her back up; she rocketed to the surface with the rest of the bubbles and saw…

The Ray-form Gem Stampede was still there, occluding the night stars.

But it had stopped moving.

Off to her side, towards the leading edge of the Gem Stampede if not right at the tip of it, she saw a gleam of light. It wasn't the Miz-Rey - too high - and it couldn't be a star.

"The Generator Quartz!" she shouted, and began to swim towards it. She had to catch it. If it fell into the ocean, it could form all over again.

For the Gem Stampede, time seemed to stand still. It hung in the air, its trailing edges ceased fluttering, the gaping hole in its body remained open. Then, its form flashed! But before it could explosively extinguish, Celestite fired the Grappler Bracer at the Generator Quartz, and pulled it free, pulling it all the way back to her so she could safely put it into a Holding Sphere.

She succeeded.

And as she finished creating a bubble around the now-stable Generator Quartz - the gemform above her extinguished, from wingtip to wingtip, simultaneously throughout its massive reach.

 _ **POOOOOOOOM.**_


	5. Five - Message from an Unknown Gem

Chapter Five

Message from an Unknown Gem

The pressure wave generated by the extinguished Ray-form Gem Stampede was more than a few moments long, and pressed into the water like a Gem returning to her Kindergarten hole - displacing enough of it to cause a serious problem to surrounding regions. Celestite herself was jostled about and forced underneath from the moving air alone, pulled back up by the life vest, and then submerged again, over and over, taking enough force directly to (probably) seriously injure a human

With enough distance, Earth's atmospheric effects would weaken the air and water waves. A human habitation _not_ at ground zero would probably get slapped with a heavy gust and a large wave, then go back to normal. Unfortunately, the Generator Quartz slipped from her grip in the process - in her hands one moment, and not the next. It was in a Holding Sphere so at least it wouldn't get the opportunity to reform, but leaving it in the wild was not ideal. Search conditions were terrible, the already dark water wouldn't have any light over it, and some humans were also nearb-

"-the Miz-Rey!" Celestite cursed. The pressure wave itself had ceased, but she was still being buffeted around by residual aftereffects and couldn't see if the humans had survived or not. She couldn't even tell which direction she was supposed to be looking in, after all that. It seemed unlikely that the watercraft could have survived unscathed, but if there was enough left of it she wanted to help restore it. They had helped her undo a mistake she'd made, and she felt like she owed them for it.

And then she felt a little weak. Between the explosion and continued high-output use of the Bracer Combo - and having just reformed not all that long ago - she'd used up a lot of energy. The main threat was over, so she felt safe in dissipating the Bracer Combo, the biggest drain on her energy of the three. No surprise, really, that it hadn't gone into production at all, when it ran off of its operator Gem's personal energy. Science Department had come up with Field Operation Packages (Limb Enhancers, essentially) that were less straightforwardly physical since she'd stolen the Bracer Combo from them, and they ran off an internal rechargeable capacitor.

With one weight lifted off of her, she continued to look around. The explosion had created far larger waves than there had been earlier, and they made it difficult to continue looking in a fixed direction. She began blinking her gem, in case they were looking for her too.

 _pschhee…'opp!_

There was a sound behind her, clearly not that of the water - then a flash before something popped. The water was then illuminated with a distracting reddish light from above.

 _HHHHHHHNNNNNnnnnn_

Then there was a ...klaxon? A horn? In between the waves, Celestite could see something bobbing up and down, gracefully and awkwardly at the same time in what she was beginning to see as a trademark of Human existence. The Fishing Vessel Miz-Rey had survived, somehow, and it wasn't too far away for a Gem in a life vest to swim over.

* * *

First Jane hugged Celestite as they pulled her from the water, excited to see that she'd succeeded in destroying the monster. Then Seana hugged them both, picking them up without noticing that she'd done so.

Snapper wasn't a hugger. He remained sitting at at the helm, relieved, with a cold drink in one hand, and a small tube he thought his daughters didn't know about not in the other hand.

"You did it!" Jane exclaimed, once she got her breath back. "You actually did it!"

"Yeah! You _really_ earned yourself some grilled Smilin' Salmon, girl!" Seana said, slapping Celestite on the back.

"I could not have done it without that harpoon, Seana. And Jane - thank you for understanding what would happen."

"Thank _you_ for warning us. Dad said we're only alive now because you had us prepare for it," Jane said.

"Of course. But the watercraft." Celestite looked around. It was clearly a lot wetter and beaten-up than before. "Is it damaged badly?"

" _Geez_ you're a downer sometimes, Celes!" Seana exclaimed. "But yeah, it took a beatin'. We're done out here now. It's a night. Gonna head back into port and _stay there_ for a few months, live on savings, see some shows."

"I'm sorry. If there's anything I can do-"

"What? No no no, you saved us! Don't worry about that right now," Seana said, appreciatively.

"...Actually," Jane began. "It _would_ cut down on expenses if you help with the repairs."

"But. Not. Now. Jane," Seana said with her teeth together.

"Well yea- No, no, _yes_ right now. The motors are both shot," Jane said, pointing.

After a bit more bickering, the crew of the Miz-Rey took note of what had been damaged. Celestite was directly responsible for a large dent in the deck, but they could 'bang that out' as Seana put it. Besides that, two of the cabin windows had shattered, some of the on-deck electronics had short-circuited, the connection between the wheel and the motors had torn (which would necessitate manually turning the motors), and everything in the cabin that wasn't locked down was strewn all over the floor. The onboard generator had been down temporarily, but Snapper had already made emergency repairs and it was functioning - they just couldn't use more than a couple of lights without risking the loss of the fish freezer. Another hard event like that might damage the hull but for now it was holding.

Along those lines: The hold had held, and their catch was safe. The employees of the Cerise Fishing Company were alive and well, if a little cold without the cabin heater - and, as a bonus, the brazier and charcoal were usable.

So, while Snapper grilled up some Smiling Salmon using an ancient Cerise technique passed from generation to generation, the rest worked on the motors.

It turned out that, between the two motors, there were enough parts for a complete write-off and something that would work long enough to get them to port by morning. Not just _a_ port, but Seapoint, their home port.

All in all, a pretty good outcome for the situation, according to Seana. Jane kept using words that Celestite didn't understand, like 'write-off' and 'kaput' and 'commercial fishing apocalypse' and 'our premiums are gonna freakin' _skyrocket_ '...

But she enjoyed the grilled Smiling Salmon all the same.

* * *

It had been a long day for the Cerise sisters, apparently. Celestite had heard somewhere that unlike the Gem race, Humans and other organic lifeforms had to switch to a regenerative low-output mode or risk catastrophic failure - but when she mentioned it to Jane, she laughed.

"No, no, that's accurate, but we call it ' _sleep_ '," Jane said. "Don't Gems sleep?"

Celestite tapped her gem. "Our gems provide all the energy we need to function, without need for 'sleep'."

"So are you just gonna stay up all night, Celes?" Seana asked, pulling out the spare (dry) cushions and putting a sheet over them. "You earned a rest. And it's not like this is gonna be a sleepover or anythin' either."

"Yeah. We're just tired." Jane patted one side of the larger cushions. "There's space for you."

"Thank you, but I would be more use as a lookout." Celestite hesitated, then sighed. "And, I would rather ensure your safe arrival at your port."

"Well, okay…" Jane said, finally. "But don't exhaust yourself. Please?"

"I won't," Celestite said, smiling. "And, thank you." She left the cabin, carefully shutting the door so it would fit in its frame, and went to the foredeck.

Leaning out on the railing at the front, she wondered if Humans really ever saw how wonderful their planet was. It was an odd thing to see so many stars so clearly; the Earth night sky was unpolluted with excess light, in places at least. Beautiful and majestic and adamant - a view that would force even the hardest of soldiers to stop in wonderment. That Earth was _ever_ considered for colonization, rather than maintained in its existing state of rustic beauty, was proof enough that _something_ was wrong with Homeworld's governing authority.

And the water - the sea, the ocean, the 'surf-n-swell' as Seana had called it. It was a blue mirror and a purifying influence on the rugged frontier. What Gem could spend time on it, and think to excise it? How _arrogant_ would a sovereign need to be to pick favorites amongst mirrors?

 _So why am I here, on Earth. Why am I not on Homeworld, fighting? What good will any of this do?_

She alternated between admiring the beauty of the planet she was stranded on, and wondering what good her presence was on Earth, for some time.

Then she heard a familiar crackle behind her. She whipped around in a battle stance… and saw that same small, pink crystalline communication device standing there on little legs. It was covered in a thin sheen of wetness, and judging by some tiny wet footprints on the deck that came up from the edge, it had landed in the ocean, swum around, found the watercraft she was on, and walked up the hull. Being the same shape and all, it probably had a propulsion system similar to the Grappler Bracer's hook(s).

She looked around. The device was too small to be seen from inside the cabin or from the helm. Chances were, the humans wouldn't know about it if she was careful. She swivelled back to the railing again. "Speak quietly," she said into the device.

"A-gent! How _are_ you?" a familiar voice asked, quietly.

"Manager," Celestite said in greeting, to the extent a flat statement in monotone could be taken as a greeting.

"Good to hear your voice again, sparklie. Now, ho-w have you been?"

"I have already decided that I won't tell you anything you couldn't work out from Homeworld."

"Mmmm, that's fine. We're more interested in you wo-rking for us. Think of these calls as… _hints_. We just want to point you in the right direction, is all. No need to get _too_ suspicious of us."

" _Point_ , then."

"In a moment, in a _mo-ment_ , sparklie. How was your ride in?"

"Bumpy."

"Well! On Homeworld, we've worked out that there are only three things that _could've_ happened. One: the Red Eye exploded on its own and its power source turned into a monster. Two: you blew up the Red Eye, and its power source turned into a monster. Three: some force on Earth blew up the Red Eye, and its pow-"

" _Why_ would you know about the Generator Quartz?" Celestite growled.

"Hey, hey, take it easy, Agent. We only figured it out by dismantling the last two Red Eyes, the ones you _didn't_ catch a ride on."

"Then it was rigged to…?" There was a plan - no, a full-fledged operation, planned by some organization on Homeworld. " _What_ do you know, Manager? No more string-pulling. Answer me."

"Okay, well, you're already on Earth anyway. Figure we've got until you find a way off, and _that'll_ be a good run I think."

"Don't be too sure, _Zircon_."

"I- Wha- No, no no no _noooo_ , I'm- I'm not- not a Zircon," the voice said. "I'm not."

"Alright then, _Manager_ ; You're _not_ a Zircon. Tell me what I need to know then, _Manager_."

"Yes. Manager. That's what I am. Ah… Ahem. The five Red Eyes were scheduled to be sent to Earth as part of a routine check. Nothing strange about that, totally routine. Except, the monitoring was assigned to a Peridot engineer that had only just completed Kindergarten training. Do you follow?"

"A Kindergartener?"

"Why would a Kindergartener be assigned to a _monitoring_ assignment? It might be a coincidence - we sure thought so, at first - but, ah, one of our members knows that Peridot."

"And?"

"She's one in several hundred, a hulking giant of a Peridot." Her voice turned serious. "Genius intellect, high aptitude for unexpected situations and independent work, top-ranked engineer and researcher, absolutely loyal - and she's even about as tall as a Ruby. So, if it was just a routine check, why was the one Peridot they could actually send to Earth assigned, out of hundreds?"

"What do you mean?"

"We think our foes were expecting the Red Eye mission to fail, and that's why they put 2F5L-5XG up for consideration for the assignment. See, she also lets the whole 'genius' thing go to her head too, so she's definitely going to push for permission to follow up on it, the pompous little _tephra_ ," the voice grumbled, only partially under her breath. "...Now, the fact that _we're_ talking means you successfully dealt with whatever problem it turned out to be?"

"...Yes."

"Good to hear! With collateral damage and casualties kept to a minimum, I assume?"

"As well as could be managed."

"Knowing you, that means zero-point-zero. We had high hopes for you, Agent, and... You. Are. Most definitely mee-ting them!"

"Glad to hear it. Now tell me why you directed me here."

"To Earth? Well... It's kind of a long story."

"Summarize it." The evasiveness was growing tiresome.

"We think a small faction of scientists are trying to coordinate with Humans, to gain technology and culture that might raise their standing in the eyes of the Diamonds."

"Why couldn't you tell me that on Homeworld?"

"You are a one-Gem resistance force trying to rip down everything Homeworld stands for. We're actively part of Homeworld, and we figured you wouldn't have believed us. And besides, we still don't have enough proof. If it's not enough to bring to Administration Department, it wasn't going to convince you."

 _Fair enough_ , Celestite thought. "And you want me to find that proof on Earth. ...Sabotaged Red Eyes aren't enough?"

"Yeah, something like that. We know they're careful. The ones we looked at, they made the sabotage seem like age-related malfunctions and a race-condition programming error. The first two, our accomplices intercepted and _accidentally_ disabled. (They had 'itchy trigger fingers' and 'misunderstood their instructions'.) Because of all this, the Red Eyes have all been grounded and the entire Homeworld fleet is being reviewed."

"The _entire_ fleet?"

"Full battery of stress checks, for every ship Homeworld knows about. We were amazed when Administration and Management got the orders for that. But that's what the thought of widespread catastrophic failure'll do, I guess."

"Fine. But the Red Eye - how would an exploration craft's malfunction on a routine planet check play into their plans?"

The voice sighed. "We're not sure. The fleet grounding's got everyone on high alert so we haven't been able to recover the operation plans yet. Maybe they wanted to create a distraction with that monster, or... destroy something specific. If Earth has planetary defenses, maybe that's what they were targeting. What we do know is, this operation has been planned out too far in advance and with too many details to just end with a single Era 1 Red Eye malfunctioning in some backwater section of the universe"

"Then more attacks will come?"

"Maybe not even _attacks_ necessarily. They're going to a lot of trouble to maintain plausible deniability and secrecy - cloak and dagger stuff."

"You can't even tell me what to expect?"

" _We_ don't know what to expect," the voice said hotly. "We're too small and fragmented a group to do a proper review. You know that armed force that confronted you in City Seven-Three?"

"Yes?" How could she forget? It had been an either worryingly _or_ comically ragtag miscellany that could never hope to shake the impression of last-second desperation.

"Well _they're_ a more effective group! _They_ had weapons and analysts! All _we_ have is communication, and _luck_."

"And me."

"And- well, yes. But you're on Earth, stopping their operations." The voice sighed again. "Let me change the subject a little. How do you feel about the Earth Conflict?"

"Is that what Homeworld calls it now?"

"Officially, yes."

"I couldn't stand what Homeworld was doing. So I went to stop it, at the source."

"Yeah, that sounds about right. But at first, you didn't know what you were doing."

"Why ask, if you're just going to read from my file…"

"I'm working up to a point, gimme a second! Ahem. But then, you learned. You know you're basically the foremost expert now on Power Generation Plants and Generator Quartzes?"

 _Not surprising_ , Celestite thought. It was the logical conclusion to endless decentralization of knowledge.

"I was _guessing_ when I said yours turned into a monster."

"Were you?" She'd figured that they'd found out the hard, destructive way that a Gem Stampede might take a massive form.

"Look. I don't know how you feel about the Earth Conflict but enough of us in our little group don't want our foes to get an unfair advantage, and definitely not by exploiting a forbidden planet. We need your help. There are other… _malcontents_ like yourself on Homeworld, but they're not as successful or merciful, and they're definitely only working for themselves. You're working for Gemkind, right? You want Our Authority to step down, cede their absolute sovereignty - but not necessarily by shattering them…" the voice trailed off, waiting.

That was how she saw it, of course, but she also saw no need to confirm it.

"You have always been a protector. I bet that's why you took care of that monster. Well, that's what we need you to do now - protect Earth, from these… You know what we call them? Their organization?"

"What?"

"The Armigers."

It was an old word, essentially meaning 'arms-bearer' and referring to an assistant or an adjunct. Celestite was old enough to remember when it was an actual staff position as well. "Makes sense. They're in a position to 'fix' things and no one suspects them."

"You'd think it would help narrow down who we need to suspect, but it doesn't. We don't know where to look, or what to look for. We only know where they're going to act. Agent, something big is going to happen. Our Authority doesn't need more absolute sovereignty, but the Armigers want to give it to them. The Armigers only care about their own glory, their own standing, not Gemkind or Homeworld or Earth. We can monitor Homeworld, but you're our Agent on Earth, and it may be that you're going to be Earth's Agent more than ours."

"That's a lot to put on one Gem."

"We know you can do it, sparklie; you might even be the next Rose Quartz. Good to talk to you again. Now, stand back-"

Celestite was able to throw the communication device some distance away in time - the Miz-Rey's deck had already seen enough gem-related violence for one day, after all. It shattered itself safely over the water.

After their last communication, she'd found and taken the time to look over the shard of communicator device she'd kept. Her initial assessment had been correct: it was so completely beyond current Gem technology that it looked like building material both whole and in shards. The ocean would dissolve and scatter the remains. Once again, the Conspiracy melted into the shadows.

She sighed. Nothing had changed, not really. She still had to recover the Generator Quartz. She would need help for that. The Cerises - which she was sure was the right way to refer to them as a group - might be able to help her in that, or at least point her in the right direction. For now, she was stuck on a watercraft in an inconvenient location, and tasked with stopping a plot from beyond the stars.

' _The Armigers', huh_ , she thought.

The F/V Miz-Rey chugged in the night, slowly making its way home. Damaged but not totaled, all occupants surviving; she hoped this wouldn't be the start of a pattern. It was hard to adjust to, but it was within her skill set.

The sisters were cold, she remembered, bundled underneath thick cloth. There was something she could do about that, wasn't there?

Celestite quietly went back into the cabin. There was a portable ceramic heater, the basics of which Jane had explained to her. She took the heater's power plug and held it next to her gem, willing electricity into it, into the heating elements - and, some time later, the cabin was warm.

Night continued. The moon watched over all.

* * *

100 feet was a relatively shallow depth for the cigar-shaped automated underwater vehicle. Even in night, at a deeper depth, it would still have been difficult to miss the glow on the ocean floor. Its cameras sent back images of a gem inside a bubble of extraterrestrial energy, exactly what it had been sent to recover.

It extended its claws and, after a little hesitation, retracted them, instead deploying its net. The gem safely recovered, the AUV began the slow return to its base. It was a long distance, far outside the range of an ordinary submersible.

Granted, this one was extraordinary only in its control software and power source. Instead of the control software expected of an AUV, it was equipped with a full AI. Instead of a high-capacity battery, it ran off of a shard of what used to be an alien.

And instead of a research or governmental organization, the AUV's masters existed elsewhere.


	6. Ending Theme

Ending Theme One  
"Rise Like A Flame" (filk)

 _When you fight the world are you standing alone?  
Only if you don't have a code  
But if there's no one left, and you're fighting alone,  
Where's the good in prevailing for love?_

 _Your villains will invoke ghosts long passed_  
 _And they will grind until they see you break_  
 _So prove you're no fake!_

 _Be the force that fractures their system to show them_  
 _You can absolve them_  
 _You can redeem them_  
 _Their authority's only secure 'til their ruin_  
 _So keep showing them_  
 _That you'll never stray_

 _Break down their phony refrain_  
 _Rise like a flame!_


	7. 5-a Deleted Scene

Deleted Scene

"Celestite's Request, Snapper's Nigh-Endless One-Take Single-Camera Monologue"

All things considered, luck was on Snapper's side. Between a daughter who was a crack shot with a harpoon launcher, an alien guest who could kick said harpoon _through_ a stadium-sized monster, and a daughter sharp enough to figure out how to survive the aftermath - the Cerise Fishing Company's F/V Miz-Rey had a hold full of fish… and lots of insurance paperwork to fill out on land.

He sighed. Having an administrator/accountant was a much better idea than he'd originally thought, and he was glad Jane had talked him into it. A night like this one would have ruined him back in the old days. Maybe it was time to start talking up the 'Cerise Luck' and the 'Cerise Deskwork' as well.

As part of that Cerise Luck, he'd picked up an alien as a passenger. Jane told him that she, Celestite, was somehow responsible for that monster. But in his experience, any single being responsible for something that big and that potentially destructive had probably had responsibility shoveled onto them. So long as they could give the insurers a good explanation, he didn't think it mattered all that much. Sounded like a one-off thing anyway.

Besides, she'd saved them from it, and was asking to help repair; offers of physical assistance from someone stronger than _Seana_ weren't to be scoffed at. They'd be up and running again in a week.

"Excuse me, Snapper?" Celestite asked. She was standing at the bottom of the steps up to the helm. (He hadn't heard her walk over from the forward pulpit, and with only one motor running _slow_ , he should have. Some aspect of her alienness, no doubt.)

"Yes?"

Celestite looked confused for a moment, then continued. "What would I need to do to go back to the exact spot the Gem St- the _monster_ exploded at? I appear to have lost something valuable there."

"Oh, you mean like a diving expedition?" He looked over at the digital map display on the console, which showed the path the Miz-Rey had taken. "Well, we have the coordinates saved and everything, so we could in theory head back, give you a line and a radio, then let you swim down and get what you're looking for. But the ship is, as you know, in all ways scientific and mechanical: FUBAR. We, uhm, might have needed you get back in the water and _push_ us home, if you kids hadn't gotten the motor working," Snapper laughed.

"E- excuse me?" Celestite said. The confusion in her expression had not abated, and instead had mysteriously increased.

"But don't worry about it. If you need to get out there soon, I'll call in a favor, get one of my buddies to take you out there. Think Yellowtail still owes me one… You up to traveling to Beach City, Celestite? He's basically my equivalent there, does a lot of specialty fishing work. Guess his oldest isn't like Seana, doesn't want anything to do with fishing, and his youngest can't get on a boat yet. Doesn't have the sea legs, or because he's too young? Anyway, the oldest. I think he's a musician? Seana and Jane've seen him perform at one of those warehouse rants, or whatever they're called. Gets it from his mom, he told me. But that's weird, because Yellow used to be a drummer! On the side, I mean. It's a city career, not a small-town one. Used to play gigs with that car wash owner in Beach City, I think. But yeah, we've got all kinds on the sea. I actually got as far as E-6 grade before I decided I needed a career. Met Seana's... mom, got hitched, started a family. Stuff happened, met Jane-Maria, started a new family. Now look at me - owner and CEO of Cerise Fishing Company, not just some squid on a skating trip. Wife at home, I get to work with my daughters, all of them harder workers than any of those skimmers or canoe clubbers they've got nowadays. I've got it all, I've got all I need, and today I nearly lost most of it. I haven't thanked you yet, Celestite. I don't know if they're a hundred percent aware of this, but _I_ know my daughters are probably alive now thanks to you. You said it might have been your fault? Doesn't matter, because you worked to clean up your own mess, and now it's clean. Good janitorial skills, the metaphorical kind in this case, are more important than never messing up, where I come from. You've got my respect, Celestite, and if you ever need help don't think for a second you can't ask me for it."

"...uhm?" Celestite said, head tilted slightly to one side, nigh-visible question marks hanging in the thin air about her.

"Besides that, though, who were you talking to? You had a little crystal or something you were talking into. Now, I'm pretty sure you came here by accident - Gems don't have much reason anymore to come to Earth. You're not a scout or a warrior by the look of it. That means you sure aren't here officially, and I don't need Seana to interrogate you to figure that out. A one-off, right? No place in the hierarchy or caste or whatever it is your Homeworld sets their clocks by? That's why you gave us a X-number serial number instead of one of those facet-cut IDs. Never could figure out why those Almighty Melodramatics or Shinies or whatever your leaders are called, think they're the Prince- _sses_ of the Universe - sorry, I realize you've probably never heard that song - when it's the groundpounders that do the work. No way to live, that. Got no place for kings or queens of the world, on our world. I'm not representing the whole planet here, but we don't mind taking in runaways on Earth, like you, like my friend. Ha! My friend; friend of mine from off-planet told me about you guys once. Haven't seen him in years, and it's probably for the best because he only comes by to save us from something _big_. You know I was about to call him back earlier? If I see him again, if he comes on by for the holidays or to just say hi or something, you know what I'm going to tell him? I'm going to have the _great pleasure_ of telling him that my five-oh peak- _human_ daughter and a human-sized alien _hero_ beat down something he'd need three minutes to work over. You understand, Celestite? You saved our lives _and_ gave me a good drinking story-slash-brag. Don't think that means more, because we have to be alive to talk about it afterwards. So, just to be clear, I personally owe you a huge favor. You need a place to stay here on Earth?"

Celestite paused for a second, and replied: "...yes?"

"Well, you're staying with us! I'll let Seana know, roomie!"

* * *

Celestite tried to parse out just exactly what Snapper had just told her. He spoke in a dialect of Human she'd never heard of (not that she knew very many), and simply couldn't understand. In fact, it sounded very much like "FFFFFRRRRRR" repeated over and over, with variations in the lengths _and_ tones of the 'FFF' and 'RRR' sounds being where meaning was held.

All she knew was that Snapper had told her _something_ extensive. It sounded like idle conversation though, so she made a note to ask Seana or Jane later what they'd talked about.

Maybe she'd subtly request a transcript.


End file.
